Today is the Woodland Trust's Big Climate Fightback day, with thousands of trees being planted around the UK. Here's my contribution—Katie the Hornbeam. I know what you're thinking—who in their right mind gives trees a name? I do, that's who. Deal with it. And I'm not claiming that my mind has ever been right in the first place. As for the choice, well, it had to be Katie didn't it? I mean, naturally elegant, endlessly inspiring and making the world a better place (it was never going to be Donald).

It’s about time we had a supergroup jazz trio. It would be a side project so no careers would have to go on hold. Here is my vision: Courtney Pine on saxophone, Jamie Cullum on piano and Katie Melua on guitar and vocals. Might be good to add bass and drums, but then it wouldn’t be a trio would it? But can you imagine the massage those three would give to your eardrums? Of course, they would have to have some kind of name—my suggestion would be Back, Sax & Crack. Courtney is Sax, obvs. Katie has to be Back—Beautiful Artist Called Katie. So that leaves Jamie as the Crack (🤭) — Cool Respected Artist Cullum King! (Lame, I know, but if he's to be the crack he needs buttering up. 🤭) Acclaimed albums, sell-out tours, cheeky t-shirts. I can see it all. Everybody’s ‘appy. Can I be their manager please?

Ah yes, the good old GAS. Everyone turns to it eventually, even the Angelic Robbie Williams and the Master of Leopard Print Leggings himself, Rod Stewart. Katie however, has been dipping in to it since day one and though this playlist at the moment is a rather short one, weighing in at just over half an hour, it would not surprise me in the least if one day she releases her own album of GAS covers. I for one will not be entirely complete until I’ve heard her sing “Summertime”. I mean, even Bob Dylan has done GAS (make your own jokes), three times in fact (though he was in his 60s—if Katie leaves it that long I may not be around to enjoy it 😱 ).

Note that Mike Batt’s “Mockingbird Song” is included because it is based on a traditional American lullaby “Hush Little Baby”, which has been covered by greats like Nina Simone.

Great American Songbook

1. What A Wonderful World
2. Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
3. Deep Purple
4. Stardust
5. Blues In The Night
6. Mockingbird Song
7. Lilac Wine
8. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Oh, you lucky, lucky people. I've got something exciting and new for you this Christmas—a Katie advent calendar. And it's calorie-free! You cannot honestly tell me that it gets any better than that. (If you can then bah humbug, go and nibble on your chocolates and watch your waistline wobble.)
Here's a sneak preview. I'll provide a link to it on December 1st. And unlike physical advent calendars, there is no cheating with this one—each present remains locked until the proper day.

Tickets are now on sale for the 2020 Europe and UK Tour so I suggest you hurry if you want a good seat. If you'd prefer a seat in a dark corner at the back right behind a pillar then by all means have another latte and finish that crossword.
You can find the links on the tour page. Or just click here.

This playlist is to get you in the mood for the upcoming new Live In Concert album, to be released on December 13th. This is the complete track listing with one exception—“Maybe I Dreamt It”. That is a new song so it hasn’t appeared on a previous album, obvs, so you can’t add it to a playlist yet, obvs. 16 of these 20 appear on Ultimate Collection, the other four are on In Winter. 15 of the tracks appear on the special edition bonus CD of In Winter, Live In Berlin, but bear in mind the new album has brand new recordings made on a different tour so the performances are not identical. The only omission from In Winter is “A Time To Buy”. I have no idea why that was left out but I empathise with it—reminds me of schooldays when sides were being picked to play football…

1. Tu Asa Turpa Ikavi (If You Are So Beautiful)
2. Plane Song
3. Belfast
4. Nine Million Bicycles
5. Just Like Heaven
6. River
7. Dreams On Fire
8. Cradle Song
9. Nunc Dimittis (All Night Vigil)
10. O Holy Night
11. Diamonds Are Forever
12. Perfect World
13. The Little Swallow
14. I Cried For You
15. The Flood
16. The Closest Thing To Crazy
17. Piece By Piece
18. Wonderful Life
19. Fields Of Gold
20. What A Wonderful World

The first track from the forthcoming live album has been released, "O Holy Night". To get your paws on it you'll need to pre-order the album at katiemelua.com. If you already have you'll need to go back there and log in to your account, then click on "My Downloads". The sound quality is amazing. Obviously, I can't just give it to you because it's not mine to give and Katie might make me write a 10-side essay on The Life Of A Ping Pong Ball. But if you are dithering about ordering then here's a snippet of OHN to whet your appetite. Listen to this and then get yourself undithered and click on the link above. And if you're ordering it for a Christmas present for someone else do yourself a favour and order a copy for you too (not U2—Bono and The Edge can afford to buy their own).

I expect most of you are bleary-eyed and delicate this morning as a result of a night of partying following yesterdays big announcements. But amongst the general chorus of “yays” on social media there have also been a few grumbles and mumbles. So I thought I’d have something of a forensic poke-around into those announcements to find out what they really mean for Ketefans.

2020 Tour

This is news the fans are always eager to hear. A major autumn tour of the U.K. and Europe, similar in scope to the 2018 tour. English, German and Polish Ketefans are all well-rewarded for their ongoing loyalty with multiple gigs in their countries. Somewhat surprisingly, there is only one date in France, and none at all for the likes of Spain, Portugal and Italy. As is always the case, disgruntled fans from such countries, and others like Australia, Canada and Brazil, have been pleading to be included. Some of them act like it is a personal snub from Katie. The truth is, I’m sure Katie would love to visit all of those places and many more besides but at the end of the day music is a business and you have to be aware of the logistics of touring. Take Australia for example. Katie may have fans down under but are the enough of them to fill venues in multiple cities? It isn’t a case of Katie hopping on a plane with her guitar. There is the rest of the band and all their instruments, speakers and sound equipment, lighting and stage props, plus support staff and all the luggage—in short, a lot of people and equipment to lug half way around the world. They’d probably need to sell out a dozen venues to make it worthwhile, and that may not be a realistic target. It is the same story in North and South America. For sure she has fans out there but again, are there enough to fill venues? I’m sure a great deal of thought goes into organising these tours and it is not for the likes of us to criticise why some places are left out. I’ll admit though, the one omission that does baffle me is Georgia. Jessie J did a gig in Tbilisi this year—I can only imagine they’d go nuts to have their own girl performing in her old back yard again.

So what does the 2020 Tour itself tell us? The main thing to note is that she is playing with her band and not the Gori Women’s Choir. This means that although the tour pushes on towards the end of November the emphasis will no longer be on In Winter. Which in turn means that the main focus will almost certainly be on a new studio album…

KM ft. GWC - Live In Concert

Katie toured last autumn. She is touring next autumn. She is not touring right now. Which is probably why we’re seeing this unexpected release. And the sumptuous package contains two CDs of live music from last years’ tour along with a beautiful hardback book. This one is for the fans. Anyone who attended one of those concerts will treasure this as a high-quality memento of their experience. It is perhaps not for the part-time fans—the kind that bought Ultimate Collection because they used to have a copy of Call Off The Search somewhere and thought it would be the easy way to catch up with what they’d missed in-between. It is pretty much a live version of Ultimate Collection, a thank-you for the last year rather than a flag-bearer for the next one.

Which brings us back to the studio. There was a great deal of expectation that 2019 would see the release of a new studio album. Katie was talking about a bunch of new songs back in March of 2018, and she even performed one, “Maybe I Dreamt It”, a year ago on the 2018 tour. So it seemed likely she would be putting the finishing touches to it early this year before recording over the summer and releasing it, well, round about now. So in a sense, yesterday’s announcement could be seen as a smokescreen to deflect attention from the fact that the studio album ain’t ready yet. But it is something of a get-out-of-jail-free card being used up. Since In Winter we’ve had a ‘best of’ collection and now a live album, so 2020 will almost certainly see us finally getting our ears on that new material we all crave. And it isn’t that much longer to wait. But after the next studio album we may have to wait a fair old while because the ‘best of’ and ‘live’ cards can’t be played again for a few years. Don’t get too despondent though—there could be another collection of unused tracks like B-Sides, an album of cover versions or perhaps an ‘unplugged’ acoustic reworking of an earlier album. Or maybe the Spice Girls will re-form and persuade Katie to replace Posh 😂 (advice: don’t put your mortgage on that). They could call her Adjika (Georgian spice).

Waiting for Katie news is like waiting for a bus. Wait ages and then two...

Announcement 1: 2020 Tour

Joy to the world! Katie has announced a 45-date tour of Europe and the UK in Autumn 2020. Click the image below for UK ticket info. Pre-sale begins Wednesday, 20th November. Full tour dates will be up in the Tour section shortly with links to European ticket sales.

Announcement 2: New Album

How much can Ketefans take? A new album in time for Christmas as well? Not the one we've been waiting for admittedly (more on that in due course) but an extremely welcome bonus in the form of a 2-CD + Book package of live performances with the Gori Women's Choir, taken from the 2018 Winter Tour. I know some cynics will look down their noses at this since there was a Special Edition of In Winter last year that had a live CD of these songs and it could be seen as milking In Winter to within an inch of its life. For hardcore fans however, it is nothing less than a treat. The performances on the 2018 Tour were stunning, and there are a couple of tracks that haven't made it to CD before. The 84-page booklet turns it into a beautiful package that is well worth having. Click the image below to pre-order (and get a code to access pre-sales for 2020 tour tickets).

Q. What is Sherlock Holmes' favourite kind of tree?

A. A lemon tree.

You're whelks.

I discovered in Georgia that you can get anyone to sing along with you by just singing two words. All you have to do is begin “Kviteli potlebi…” and they’re off. Everyone knows the song. And it isn’t even the national anthem (“Tavisupleba”, თავისუფლება, if you must know). It got me thinking—every nation seems to have a song that rouses the spirit of the people from childhood through to old age. Every nation, that is, except England. I can’t think of a single song that everyone knows, that unites the country with fierce pride and togetherness. The Scots can all join in “Flower of Scotland” (or “Donald Where’s Yer Trousers”, or anything by The Proclaimers). The Welsh are a nation of singers and have a hatful of songs that all Welsh people know and will launch into at the drop of said hat. The Irish can croon “Danny Boy” at you. But the English? Nope. Nothing. Not a sausage. I have no idea why this is. Perhaps it has to do with it being such a multi-cultural melting pot with so many blended nationalities that ‘being English’ is just too broad a group to get everyone singing from the same sheet. It may not always have been that way. I get the feeling that everyone in the Middle Ages went around whistling “Greensleeves” despite there not being any radio or pop charts. And of course, during the wars there have been rallying songs like “Pack Up Your Troubles” and “We’ll Meet Again”. But nowadays there’s nothing to get us warbling in unison (though if the “Strictly” theme had lyrics…)

It doesn’t help to have a dreary dirge for a national anthem. There have been many calls to change it to something more rousing. The likes of “Land Of Hope And Glory”, “I Vow To Thee My Country” and “Jerusalem” have all been championed, along with the more ponderous “Abide With Me”. Any of those would be better, but they are all old and hard to sell to a younger generation. There are songs within communities that everyone knows. For example, who in Liverpool doesn’t know “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, whilst rugby fans can all chant “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”. Yorkshire has “On Ilkley Moor B’aht ‘At”, bless ‘em. But outside of their communities those songs may be known but have less meaning to people. Most Ketefans could sing “The Closest Thing To Crazy” for you but I don’t think even Katie can unite this disparate nation. Or can she? Maybe it is time for a new talent show. Something like “Britain’s Favourite National Song”. Let the public make online suggestions and the ten most popular ones get performed live by an established artist and put to the vote. The overall winner then becomes required learning in the school curriculum. That way, the next generation at least will have a song that everyone knows. Now, any non-English person reading this won’t give a pregnant meerkat about it, that’s fine, but if you are English you will no doubt have your own ideas about which song should win BFNS. As you might have guessed, I’ve been giving it some thought and my choice would be Katie Melua (didn’t see that coming, did you?) singing The Beatles’ “Let It Be”. I reckon that might win, though I'm sure the nation would remain divided. But even if it did become a national song, good luck getting a stranger to sing along with you after two words. “When I…”

I’ve said before that a computer can never write a song because it has never experienced human emotions such as love and loss. But—and it’s a big but—that’s not to say a computer couldn’t generate music. More than a decade ago, Brian Eno released an iPhone app that could randomly generate ambient music. It blurred the boundaries. Was the music you were hearing his or the computer’s? He may have programmed the algorithm behind it but the music you were hearing at any given time was unique and Eno wouldn’t have heard that same sequence himself. So it’s a grey area. That said, all the iPhone was doing was juggling bytes around in its memory. It was in no sense aware of what it was creating, nor was it applying any of its own feeling or emotion to the creative process. And this is where a quantum leap will be required before a computer can create music by A.I. It may never be able to. Robots, or androids, may fare better since they will be constructed as autonomous entities, able to ‘see’ the world. They’ll also be able to hear and have tactile feedback, as well as inputs that humans don’t have such as thermal and infra-red. That will mean each android would have a unique experience of interaction with the world, just as humans do, and that could be enough to allow them to create art or music in a way that their creators never anticipated. That is still a long way off though.

Jean-Michel Jarre seems to be marmite with people. Some hate electronic music in general and think of it as cheesy lift music or whatever. Others, and I include myself among them, were utterly blown away by Oxygene in the 70s and fell madly in love with Jarre and other pioneers like Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, and many modern ambient music giants such as Marconi Union and Carbon Based Lifeforms are influenced by them. It was Jarre who opened a door in my brain to a world of sonic possibilities and now forty years later he has done it again. EōN is not a new album, it is a new app for iPhone and iPad. And it is astonishing. You could even describe it as the missing link—it provides a glimpse of what AI music might one day become. Eno’s Bloom app was innovative but the variation was too limited. In theory you may never have heard the same thing twice but it quickly all began to sound the same and the novelty soon wore off. Jarre has adopted a similar concept but he has really nailed it. When you launch the app it plays like an album with each track lasting three or four minutes or whatever, with a slight pause between them. And each new track sounds different. There are enough variations that you never think “didn’t I just hear that a few minutes ago?” It plays like a Jarre album. The difference is, you’ll never hear the same thing twice. Every time you launch the app it’s like listening to a new album. And what you hear is so good you quickly wish you could hook it up to a digital recorder because it begins to bother you that you might never that same sequence again. It is billed as an infinite musical creation, an endless album, and it is exactly that. The app costs the same as a CD but it is in effect free because what you are getting is unlimited free music forever (well, at least until Apple muck about with iOS to a point where it won’t run anymore—it will rely on the developers keeping it updated in future.)

If you are at all a fan of ambient music you really need to give EōN a go. It may not be true A.I. music but it feels like it could be, and that is pretty exciting. Even as I write this I’ve just heard a choral blast reminiscent of the Gori Women’s Choir and that is something I hadn’t heard before, though as yet I haven’t been treated to anything like Katie’s lovely voice (not that I’d expect to with ambient electronica). This app is art. Indeed, the screen doesn’t just sit idly be like a lemon while you’re ears are being treated—your eyes get some fun too with a never-ending, never-repeating display of evolving digital art. What a triumph the whole thing is. Mind blown.

Is Katie mad about the moon? I don't know. But I imagine she is. Isn't everybody mad about the moon? I think you'd have to be mad not to be mad about the moon. After all, it has a palpable influence on us all. Anyway, you're probably wondering when in the name of deep-fried Tunnock's Tea Cakes am I going to get to the point. Well, I had Katie's entire back catalogue playing on shuffle the other day whilst I was decorating, as I'm prone to do (shuffling her back catalogue that is, not decorating—and why does "shuffling her back catalogue" sound wrong?), and the thing is, it struck me that she seemed to sing about the moon a lot. Me being me, I felt compelled to find out exactly how much was a lot. So here you are—a playlist of songs that mention the moon. You lot don't deserve me. Actually, it's not as big a list as I expected though it is quite big considering she's never once sung about gerbils, Lego, Bruno Tonioli, Pop-Tarts or unexpected low-frequency radio emissions. (I may have just given her some song ideas.)

Moon Madness

1. Blame It On The Moon
2. Moonshine
3. Better Than A Dream
4. Chase Me
5. I Do Believe In Love
6. I Think It’s Going To Rain Today
7. Red Balloons
8. The House
9. Deep Purple

Katie's 6th studio album, Ketevan was released on her 29th birthday. From what I can gather this was serendipitous rather than planned so it must have been a nice feeling for her. (On my last birthday a box of print copies of my book The Planet Baggers arrived and it certainly made my day. One day, I intend selling a copy...)

You may have a great melody tumbling round in your brain but what will really define it and turn it into a great (or otherwise) song is the lyrics you marry it with. And there’s far more to lyrics than meets the eye. They can be simple, repetitive, epic, cryptic, mysterious, funny, nonsensical, or a blend of some of those things. But which is right for your song? For everyone that listens to the melody it will paint a different picture in their mind. You may have a subject planned already or you can just let the music suggest something but your approach to the lyrics can make or break a song. A catchy pop song often has simple or repetitive lyrics with a relatable subject like falling in love. But you may want to say something deeper. The trouble with that is you may not wish to bear your soul to the world. This is where you begin to disguise your message. You can make the words mysterious or even cryptic. Some people may get what you’re alluding to; others may miss the point completely but still like the sound of your words. It is a difficult balancing act. If you are too cryptic then no one will understand what you’re on about and that can frustrate people and turn them off the song altogether. On the other hand, you don’t want people to see straight through the disguise. You need to leave a little ambiguity—you could be talking about yourself or equally somebody else.

If you try to be too mysterious you can end up with a nonsense song. The Beatles probably started off that trend in the late 60s, with the aid of some dubious substances. You can get away with unfathomable lyrics if your melody is good (and with The Beatles it generally was), but writing nonsense lyrics is a dangerous game to play and can lead to people jumping to their own conclusions about the meaning (Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds anyone?).

You may have a political message you wish to get across. Obviously, this is always a risk and can be a good way to lose a lot of fans very quickly. Some artists consider it a price worth paying, and of course you might win new fans too. Generally, if you stay true to yourself and say what you want to say then the fans that stick with you will be the right ones. For a struggling artist though it may be too much of a gamble to get too political unless you really have your finger on the pulse of public feeling.

The most ambitious type of lyric is to tell a story instead of a simple message. The shorter the song, the more challenging this can be. Mike Batt is good at it—just listen to “Market Day In Guernica”, a song that paints a complete picture in under four minutes. Bob Dylan, naturally, could do it concise though his general philosophy seems to be it takes as long as it takes. His epic Tempest consists of 45 verses (count ‘em!) which takes him around 14 minutes to sing. If commercial success is a priority for you then it may be best to hold back with the epic tales for now.

If you’re lucky, the right approach may come naturally to you. If it doesn’t, and you end up with a lyric you are not entirely happy with then walk away for a bit, come back and try doing it a different way completely. You may start with Happy Talk and end up with Bohemian Rhapsody. Or vice versa.

Soap box time. There are still people that think Mike Batt wrote most of Katie's songs. Time for a stat attack! Katie's seven standard studio albums have totalled 80 tracks (the first four each had 12, the next two had 11, and In Winter had 10. I've no idea why those numbers are gradually diminishing!)

Of those 80, Katie co-wrote 7 with Mike. Mike was involved with 24 others, Katie with 29 others. 19 were covers. (If you've been counting and paying attention you'll be thinking that those numbers add up to 79. Well done. Luke Batt wrote the other one!) So Katie was involved with the writing of 36 of the 80 tracks compared to Mikes' 31. Booyakasha. In real terms, the gap is actually even wider—allow me to explain. Several of Mike's songs were written for himself or other artists before he even knew Katie, so technically they are covers as they weren't written *for* Katie. Within her next couple of albums, Katie's overall involvement in the writing of her music is likely to creep above the 50% mark. Songwriter. Big Badda Boom.

It’s nice when people believe in you. It’s also a complete waste of their time. Unless, that is, you believe in yourself. And that is something every one of us should do. Of course, some people already do, often to excess. But that is fine. Being over-confident is not a crime. Not believing in yourself should be. It’s okay to understand your limitations, in fact it is a good thing, but that should never lead you to conclude that others are better than you because their abilities appear to exceed yours. Every single human being that is born is unique and has their own value to add to the world. No one is more precious or worthy than anyone else. The thing worth remembering is that it is impossible to compare achievements or measure success in any meaningful way—certainly not by fame or fortune, both of which can be fickle and fleeting. To some, our impact in this life may seem minimal, our very existence pointless, but that is never actually the case. If you could study any one life in microscopic detail you would begin to discover just how important we all are. Our very existence influences the world in subtle ways we cannot know. Perhaps you think you have never done anything worthy of mention. Never won anything. Never achieved anything. But you can never know that for sure. What if, say ten years ago, you stopped a child running under a bus? You may have been a hero for two minutes but that was long since forgotten. What if that child was, for example, Greta Thunberg? You would have no way of ever knowing that but it just goes to show how we all have a role and purpose in this life even if it isn’t apparent to us. There is a point to you, whether or not you realise it. You may not be better than the next person but equally, they are not better than you despite any apparent evidence to the contrary. We each have our own tangled thread to follow through space and time and we each cross the timelines of many other people during our life creating a massive invisible spider’s web of interaction that is impossible to unravel and make sense of. We cannot ever truly know the meaning of it all. We just have to go about our lives and do the things that call to us, regardless of what others may say or think. You may not ever discover your true purpose but by the time you exhale your final breath you can rest assured that you will have achieved it somewhere along the line.

Well, that was all a bit heavy, wasn’t it? So what brought it on? I was listening to Spider’s Web and thinking what a great song it was. It made me wonder why Katie lacks confidence in her ability to write lyrics. I’ll show you the lyrics right here and let you make your own mind up but I can’t help feeling the likes of Dylan, McCartney or Simon, or indeed Batt, would be proud to have that song on their C.V.

If a black man is racist, is it okay
when it’s the white man’s racism that made him that way?
Because the bully’s the victim they say
By some sense they’re all the same

Because the line between
wrong and right
is the width of a thread
from a spider’s web

The piano keys are black and white
but they sound like a million colours in your mind

I could tell you to go to war
or I could march for peace and fighting no more
how do I know which is right?
and I hope he does when he sends you to fight

Because the line between
wrong and right
is the width of a thread
from a spider’s web

The piano keys are black and white
but they sound like a million colours in your mind

Should we act on a blame?
or should we chase the moments away?
should we live?
should we give?
remember forever the guns and the feathers in time

Because the line between
wrong and right
is the width of a thread
from a spider’s web

The piano keys are black and white
but they sound like a million colours in your mind

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